This week’s menu planning is brought to you by gratitude – for being back in quasi-warm California after a week in the arctic chill of NYC! New York, you are a beautiful yet frosty wench.

Because it’s been so brisk outside, this is a week of healthy comfort food. These recipes were chosen because there is nice overlap between many of them, so by the end of the week you should have used up everything, especially the fresh sage, parsley, and lemons, those weird hangers-on that usually languish and die at the bottoms of refrigerators. This is why we menu plan.

Another thing to remember as you’re cooking this week – don’t be scared to make substitutions! If you’d rather make the meatballs with ground beef, go for it. If you don’t have a red onion, use a yellow one. Would rather spinach instead of kale? Totally fine. People often get scared to deviate from the recipe, but that’s how we learn!

Plus, if it looks and smells great when you’re done, you’ll likely still have something delicious for dinner.